Television - The iranian hostage crisis

No international story other than war dominated television news for as
long as the Iranian hostage crisis. The seizure of the staff of the U.S.
embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979 marked the beginning of fourteen
months of concentrated, dramatic, and controversial news coverage that
affected both public understanding of the hostage crisis and government
efforts to resolve it.

TV's treatment of the Iranian hostage crisis invites comparison
with its reporting about a similar event—the seizure of the USS
Pueblo
on 23 January 1968 and the imprisonment of its crew of eighty-two
(another crew member died of wounds incurred during the ship's
capture). The North Korean capture of this intelligence ship got extensive
coverage for several days on all three networks. Yet even when it led the
news, the
Pueblo
seizure seemed to be related to the biggest continuing story at the
time—the Vietnam War. Some reporters, such as ABC's
diplomatic correspondent John Scali, told viewers that senior U.S.
officials believed that the North Koreans had coordinated their action
with the North Vietnamese, who were massing troops around the U.S. marine
base at Khe Sanh. The beginning of the Tet Offensive a week later eclipsed
the
Pueblo
story, although newscasts occasionally reported about the negotiations to
free the crew. No one, at least on TV, counted the days (335) that the
sailors remained in captivity. No Western journalist could go to Pyongyang
to interview government officials or gauge popular attitudes toward the
United States. Without such film reports, the
Pueblo
story simply could not hold a prominent, continuing position on TV
newscasts. Film of some crew members did occasionally appear on the
evening news programs. But the North Korean government approved its
release; it contained confessions of wrongdoing and apologies, and the
network journalists who narrated it made clear that the film was highly
suspect. A few interviews with family members dwelled less on their
distress or outrage than on whether the face or voice in the film was
really their relative's and whether he appeared any different since
being imprisoned. The
Pueblo
was an important story, but in 1968—a year of "horrors and
failures," according to CBS's Harry Reasoner—it was
not nearly as sensational or shocking or troubling as the assassinations
of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the violence at the
Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia,
or the war in Vietnam.

The Iranian hostage crisis, by contrast, became a dominant story quickly
and remained so throughout its duration, even during the 1980 presidential
election campaign. Some journalists did not imagine that it would become a
news event of such magnitude. Ted Koppel, who covered the State Department
for ABC, thought that this incident, like the detention of U.S. diplomats
during an earlier invasion of the embassy in Tehran on 14 February 1979,
would be over in hours. Yet the Sunday evening edition of ABC's
World News Tonight
on the first day of the crisis showed some of the images that did much to
stoke public outrage: glimpses of hostages in handcuffs and blindfolds,
the burning of an American flag, and a photograph of the Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, who reportedly approved the takeover of the embassy.

Network competition had a notable effect on ABC's coverage of the
crisis. In 1977 ABC News, traditionally third in ratings and reputation,
got a new president, Roone Arledge, who also headed the network's
highly successful sports division. Arledge considered expanding
World News Tonight
to a full hour as a way of giving it more prominence, but local
affiliates were unwilling to cede to the network an additional—and
highly profitable—half hour. Arledge then experimented with late
night news programming by airing half-hour specials with increasing
frequency at 11:30
P.M
. (EST). The hostage crisis gave Arledge the opportunity to secure
permanent hold of that time slot. ABC, however, did not show its first
late-night special until 8 November 1979 nor make it a nightly offering
until six days later. The title of the show was both revealing and
influential:
America Held Hostage.

On 24 March 1980 the program got a new, permanent host, Koppel, and a new
name,
Night-line.
It continued to provide daily coverage, even if the hostage crisis
sometimes was not the lead story. Koppel hoped to use the growing
capabilities of satellite technology and his skills as an interviewer to
create "intercontinental salons" on live TV. Yet the
discussion on the debut program was hardly genteel, as Dorothea Morefield,
wife of a hostage, asked Ali Agah, the Iranian chargé in
Washington, how his government could "continue to hold these
innocent people." Some critics found such verbal confrontations
contrived and mawkish, with news taking a back seat to show business. Yet
television newscasts have long been a mixture of entertainment and
information;
Nightline
expanded the limits of an established genre. And like ABC, the other
networks covered the hostage crisis as a human drama as well as an
international event, devoting considerable time both to interviews with
family members and to the diplomatic efforts to secure the
hostages' release. While ABC may have provided the hostage crisis
with a melodramatic title, CBS's Walter Cronkite,
television's most respected journalist, popularized what became the
standard for measuring its duration. He added to his famous
sign-off—"and that's the way it is"—a
count of the days, eventually 444, that the fifty-two hostages endured
captivity.

The Carter administration at first welcomed the heavy news coverage.
Administration officials had many chances to explain to viewers that they
were taking strong, but measured action—diplomatic initiatives,
economic sanctions—to try to resolve the crisis without resorting
to military force. Jimmy Carter could concentrate on his role as
president, rather than as candidate facing a vigorous challenge for his
party's presidential nomination from Senator Edward M. Kennedy of
Massachusetts. Indeed, Carter conspicuously refrained from campaign travel
in favor of a Rose Garden strategy that played up his responsibilities as
national leader. Carter's approval rating surged from 30 to 61
percent during the first month of the hostage crisis. Never before had the
Gallup Poll recorded such a sharp improvement.

Yet administration officials soon deplored the extensive television
coverage. Hodding Carter, the State Department spokesperson, complained
that news reports were complicating negotiations. White House officials
found considerable evidence that Iranian demonstrators were playing to the
cameras. Yet their efforts to shift public attention away from the hostage
crisis simply would not work because of what presidential counsel Lloyd
Cutler called "the constant drumbeat of TV news." Deputy
Secretary of State Warren Christopher believed that television intensified
public anger and frustration as it reported about the failed rescue effort
in April 1980, described diplomatic initiatives that seemed ineffective,
and relentlessly counted the days. Press secretary Jody Powell expressed
his frustration at the end of one long day when there had been
demonstrations across from the White House by two antagonistic groups that
had shouted and scuffled. He crossed Pennsylvania Avenue late at night,
walked into Lafayette Park, and unexpectedly encountered CBS reporter Jed
Duvall. The reason for these prolonged difficulties, Powell blurted out,
was "the networks with their nose up the Ayatollah's
ass."